"And a cat named Pepper."
"Pepper," said Delia gravely, "ran away to join the circus."
His mother looked at her for a long moment over the cinnamon toast. Then she began to laugh. It was not a polite laugh. It was a real one, helpless and girlish, from somewhere deep in her chest, and she had to put the toast down and press her napkin to her mouth, and her pearls clicked against her collarbone, and Delia started laughing too, and Wes sat between them with bacon on his sweater and the distinct, chilling sensation of having walked into the middle of a conversation that had started long before he arrived.
When she had recovered, Barbara dabbed at her eyes and pushed her chair back and said, "Wait here. Both of you. Don't move."
She went upstairs. They heard her bedroom door, and a drawer opening and closing.
"She knows," Wes whispered fiercely across the table.
"Of course she knows," Delia whispered back. "She's known since the walk. Eat your hash."
"Then why is she—what is she—"
His mother came back down the stairs. She was holding a small velvet box, the dark green of a pine tree, worn pale at the corners from years of being held. She sat down across from Delia, and opened it, and turned it around on the tablecloth so that the snowlight fell into it.